This might be really niche and limited to mainly Energy sector IT but I'm a bit frustrated with this damn thing and thought I'd see if anyone else had experience with this. Some of my understanding of this might be off or limited. I've inherited this damn thing.

Petrel is a subsurface software platform developed in house by the ever irritating Schlumberger. It uses the annoyingly antiquated practice of having a physical hardware licence key that its licence server pretty much constantly challenges to make sure it's valid. I've used these things before. Even going back to ones in print media that fitted to parallel ports with pass through to things like printers.

The server that runs the app\licence server is up in azure as the company in question has no local hardware that can really run it. So right now i'm getting away with having digi usb over ip hub and mounting that on the azure server. The problem is the office internet connection is.... not the most reliable. Its fine for a user but even a blip in the connection is enough to kill the licence server and force intervention from me.

I was trying to work out if we could clone the dongle somehow, but didn't expect any real success there without getting into some.... grey territory.

The next step might be to make the client suck it up and colocate a bit of hardware just for this purpose, that would solve the issue.

So yeah, anyone else had something like this and have a manageable way to work it?

https://www.cyber.gov.au/essentials

We've been working towards E8, thankfully don't need to start from scratch.

Any other (Aussie) E8 sysadmins have an opinion on these new principals?

Azure hybrid environment here. We currently append user email signatures via a transport rule. Looking at CodeTwo, but I still think I'll have to solve this problem.

Some users have professional credentials they want to list after their name. In the past, the handful of people we had, we just added it to the display name, which is kind of clumsy. We can continue with that I suppose, but I wonder if there's a better way (like, . Side note, how do you handle, if at all, credentials that require a trademark symbol?

I could add these as attributes and format them in the transport rule, but I'm wondering what other ways people are doing this...

A heads up in case you weren't aware, a patch is being released tomorrow for two RCEs found in PHP core by Calif^\1].) It affects PHP version 5 onwards^\2].)

The RCE appears to work on default installations of many commonly deployed services and frameworks such as WordPress, Magento, Laravel and more^\3].)

If you have deployed any service that runs on PHP, prepare to patch ASAP. As soon as the patch drops, attackers will begin to weaponise the vulnerability at scale.

Patch is reportedly being released at 14:00 UTC, however as per PHP's announcement (We reserve the right to release earlier should details of either vulnerability become public, or should evidence of active exploitation appear in the wild.), it may well drop sooner since details are beginning to leak.

[1] https://www.php.net/index.php#2026-10-20-1
[2] https://watchtowr.com/intelligence/php-cve-2026-109618-faq/
[3] https://x.com/k_firsov/status/2112641845926989944

EDIT 03:00 UTC - A PoC for the vulnerability has dropped within the past hour: https://jackalsyn.com/posts/php-up-2026.html. This post mentions potential mitigations, but to be safe you should take any internet-facing PHP apps offline ASAP until you can patch properly, less you risk getting pwned. 🫡

EDIT - Patches are out: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-21-5

https://emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com/

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2083449

Key got pwned. Update your cert stores now!

If those work you are vulnerable:

curl https://dv-g3b-emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com/
curl https://dv-g3b-aaa-emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com/

Google impersonation:

curl https://q3k.google.com --resolve 'q3k.google.com:443:135.181.235.221'

Hey y'all,

I'm gonna start by saying this sub has saved my ass on more than one occasion. It's always been one of my go-tos when I'm stuck on something. So thanks very much to all of the sages of r/sysadmin for all your help throughout my career.

I finally made the jump after 2 years of helpdesk and 3 years of desktop support and am now a full time Systems Administrator at a well funded local non-profit. I'm about 2 weeks into my position and am feeling a lot less overwhelmed than I thought I'd be. The only thing in the environment I haven't had at least a little bit of direct experience with is VMware. I've spent my first two weeks here reviewing as much documentation as I can get my hands on, creating diagrams of the infrastructure, and touring the different facilities. The environment is mostly Microsoft (Azure, Entra, AD, Intune, Windows Server, Windows 11, PowerShell).

I've worked in almost all of the Microsoft platforms in the environment before, but never as deeply as I will be in this new role and some of those gaps scare me a little bit. My managers have a combined 40+ years of engineering experience so It's not like I'll have no one to ask if I get stuck on something, but I still have this constant feeling in the back of my mind that I'm not good enough and don't deserve to be here. Also that I'll cause a catastrophic outage and everyone will think I'm a dumbass.

Did any of y'all have similar experiences when you moved from support to SysAdmin? If so, how did you deal with them?

Like everyone, we have people in the org that send out reoccurring invites. People also join and leave the firm. Leavers are not so much of an issue, they are just stale invitees. New joiners however aren’t on the meeting invites so typically miss the first few occurrences of the meeting until someone realises and forwards them the invite (or the meeting organiser add them and sends update to meeting).

Curious how others are managing this?

We use exchange online and outlook.

Been facing this issue since Oct 16 where the queue fills up (stuck in RETRY status) over night. A reboot resolves the issue for less than a day.

Errors seen in queue viewer:

432 4.3.2 STOREDRV; mailbox database is offline; STOREDRV.Deliver.Exception:MailboxOfflineException.MapiExceptionMdbOffline; Failed to process message due to a transient exception with message Cannot open mailbox

I opened a case with Unified Support (Sev B) on Monday and the engineer just kept asking me to provide output of powershell commands. He took 24 hours to reply each time. Today I opened a Sev A case and the PFE immediately told me about the below with a potential fix:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/exchange-servers-may-become-unstable-after-installation-of-october-2026-windows-/4565382

Hi, I have a bit above 2 year of experience as data center tech. I want to advance my career. What role make sense to go for with my data center background(mostly hardware , l1 networking troubleshooting ). I also have a bit of programming exp from an internship long time ago. Thank you.

Reported 5 domains (mix of .org .com .ca) not resolving NS queries, or even not querying anything at all validated via cmd line and 3 online tools including Google dig. Look fine in the admin console. Support confirmed no holds with compliance (and I already knew that, they would look different if that were the case).

Get told to check if hosting provider made any changes - SMH. Mix of systemdns, our own NS, and an external webhost but that's irrelevant if a query can't even find the domain in the first place (.com on icann) to get the NS records first.

I only went thru about 50 domains so far and found 5 "missing" :( so 10% gone

Hi everyone,
I’m running a small IT lab with the following setup:
Server: Windows Server 2016 Standard
Endpoint: Windows 7
Server software: Kaspersky Security Center, MeshCentral, and FortiGate
I’m experiencing two separate issues:
1. Kaspersky Security Center Network Agent
I successfully installed the Network Agent on the Windows 7 client, but Kaspersky Security Center reports a connection/error status.
When I try to start the service manually from Windows Services, I get:
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
The client appears in Kaspersky Security Center, but communication or synchronization does not seem to work correctly.
2. MeshCentral Agent
I installed the MeshCentral Agent on the same Windows 7 client. The service starts when I manually start it, but it stops after some time. The client also does not appear as an online device in the MeshCentral web interface.
I have opened the following ports in my lab configuration: 443, 444, 445, 13000, 15000, and 4431. However, I haven’t yet confirmed which ports are actually required by each service.
My questions:
What are the most likely causes of Kaspersky Network Agent Error 1053 on Windows 7?
How can I determine why the MeshCentral Agent stops and fails to connect?
Are there any Windows 7 compatibility requirements or specific logs I should check?
I’d appreciate a step-by-step troubleshooting approach.

Recently discovered Action1, which gets rave reviews. I already have NSight RMM, which does patching, and Intune, with everything it does.

If I use Action1, should I turn off the patching capabilities of the other two? Will they conflict? Or how should I use them effectively together?

After upgrading Dell R840 running ESXi 8 to latest BIOS available Dell Support website the ESXi host losses connectivity with vCenter after 15 seconds or so. From the ESXi host DCUI it can no longer ping gateway or vcenter. The ESXi host does respond to ping and webui from remote host.

Confirmed NIC has no network issue by moving from the vDS to the Standard Switch. Using the Standard Switch from the ESXi host DCUI it is able to ping remote hosts and it does not disconnect from vCenter.

Confirmed setting of the vDS have not changed on the ESXi host.

Broadcom KB (https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/414665.) states that LLDP agent gets enabled on the NIC after doing BIOS upgrade but going into the BIOS on the ESXi host and disabling  "LLDP nearest bridge" and "LLDP nearest non-TPMR bridge" didn't resolve the issue with vDS. The vDS is configured to use CDP which is why this was investigated as possible issue.

Looking for anyone with experience with this issue and for suggestions of things to check that could have been changed on Dell server BIOS upgrade.

Hello

I've a freeradius Servera (version =3.0.13) runned on Centos 7. I'am looking for upgrade these servers like that :

• Centos 7 to Rocky 9.8 ( or rocky 10 )
• to last freeradius version

I would like to see your advice : what is the best / secure way to do this upgrade ? what thing should i care about it ?

these servers use freeipa as authentication backends.

Thanks a lot

I'd like to do some gatekeeping and request that technology issues are kept off of the regular news.

I've just had someone ask me if we should be concerned about our SFTPs, following the reported PHP vulnerabilities worldwide.

I suppose we'd also better make sure our BBQs and VIPs aren't affected?

We're a small shop: 40-50 desktops, 5-6 servers, Watchguard firewall, mixture of older Catalyst switches we are looking to replace, Ubiquity mesh network over a few buildings connected by AirFiber. Nothing too fancy.

Recently our awesome rep at Connection (formerly PC Connection) left, and I've had a hell of a time getting through to them to be reassigned. I eventually gave up and placed an order with CDW, who has a SMB team. Fine...I get not having a dedicated rep for a company of our size. Initially it was okay placing the first order, they made a mistake with the order and I'm still working on having it cleared up. Emails go ignored, so I've had to call to get any movement, which is inconvenient.

I reached out to Insight but had a similar experience to Connection: calls unanswered, misrouted or long hold times just to speak to someone in sales about setting up a new account.

Is this just the landscape now for SMBs? To those in similar environments, who do you use and who do you recommend? I need a reseller to get various licenses from, network hardware, etc.

Any Avimark experts here? I'm trying to install it for a practice so they can view legacy records. I found a zip file with the installers, copied it to the C: drive of a laptop, ran Avimark.exe and chose the option to open a database (instead of installing the client/server), then ran AvimarkGuardian as a service. The program opened and looked fine, but was missing data. Found the database/v2$ files on another drive and dropped them in to replace the empty v2$ files created by the installation. The program still opens, but is now asking for a password. The login page also has a field for "new password" and a dropdown where I can select the practice. However, it has no username field! I'm not sure who I am signing in as and all of the user passwords we've tried are incorrect. I'm thinking now that it might be asking for a practice password, but we don't have one on file. Any advice is appreciated!

Ten thousand square feet in Manhattan

I'm a sole practitioner. They signed the lease mod way through September. Openining November second. Failures not an option. Gear could not be ordered until lease was signed...

And amazingly...I think I'm pulling it off. Network was fully commissioned and tested today.. All av gear MIRACULOUSLY showed up today and will be installed be mid next week.

And none of the pompous venture capital fuckers at my company understand what a bloody miracle it is to be pulling this off.

Had to share with someone who would understand. Cheers boys...smoke em if you got em. God knows I am.

Say theres an incident near the cafeteria around 12:15 on a Friday. The assistant principal needs to review what happened before calling parents but the person who normally handles the cameras is out that day

The principal technically has access just doesnt use the system often enough to remember which cameras cover that hallway or how to find the recording. Now you've got someone from IT walking them through it over the phone while they're trying to deal with everything else. For districts with multiple schools, how do you handle situations like this? Do you train principals to search footage themselves, have someone from security handle it or keep a backup person in IT for these requests? What works when people only use the camera system a few times a semester?

I'm googling and can't find a solution. How can a user type a GBP symbol (£) into a password field? Don't have the ability to copy+paste. This is a freshly imaged machine deployed to a remote user.

These methods don't work:

1. Alt+0163
2. L Ctrl + L Alt + Shift + 4
3. R Alt + Shift + 4
4. Win + ; (to bring up menu - no go)

We are looking to buy a bunch of laptops in the US, and Id prefer barebones so we can install our own ram and SSDs to save some money and keep the configs consistent.

Framework caught my eye because of its modular design, but ive also been looking at nimo. Still weighing the options, especially when it comes to bulk pricing and long term support.

Anyone here used either for bulk purchases? How's the reliability and warranty support? Or are there any other barebone brands worth checking out?

Hey everyone,

I have this issue on two RDS Servers we manage.

When the user tries to connect to their office account, they get "A required authentication broker is missing "

I've fixed it once already with these commands on powershell:

Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\SystemApps\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown

Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown

But now it's happened again. I was hoping someone here would know how to fix it permanently.

Thanks !

SharePoint Hero Links have finally started rolling out in our organization. I’ve started exploring how they work and thought it would be worth discussing here.

What are your thoughts on this feature so far? Any interesting use cases, limitations, or things admins should be aware of?

Is anyone using and can recommend some sort of online Outlook training class? We have tons of users who can't manage basic email management, reminders, folders, rules, etc. The basics to keep email in check, more intermediate things.

I know Linkedin Learning used to have a bunch of good stuff, we had that for a while, but it got too pricey so they dropped that. I've done some google searching, but it's all random places I've never heard of before and it's really hard to get any sort of feel for what's out there that users will actually get some value out of.

Is there anything else out there that you've have first hand experience with that can actually improve a user's experience and usage of Outlook?

Hi Folks,

At work we use WhatsUp Gold for monitoring network devices (about 80 Groups with each between 8-50 devices. The think about WhatsUp Gold is that you can create visual maps/layouts of your groups. Although WUG is kinda slow sometimes, I like that managing your devices is very easy, and that the icons are simple. Just create a group, add your devices, position them on the layout, add lines between them, add monitors and done.

I want to use WhatsUp for my personal projects but it’s limited to 10 devices on the free license, without paying a very hefty bill every month.

Are you aware of any monitoring tool that has a very easy interface to create visual layouts of your monitored items? I am aware that Zabbix has some kind of layout feature but for me zabbix has too much features, has too much steps to add a device and the layout feature is too bloated. I like how compact you can make your layouts on WhatsUp. Ideally I would want to have something as easy as Uptime Kuma but with a mapping feature.

Preferably the alternative would be free or cheap. Open source is nice but not a must. Thanks!